


The Death of Jason Todd

by daemoninwhite



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Non-Permanent Character Death, implied violence against sex workers, implied violence against transwoman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 21:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20516918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daemoninwhite/pseuds/daemoninwhite
Summary: This is what death is now, for Jason. Who it is.





	The Death of Jason Todd

**Author's Note:**

> I tag on the side of caution, but consider this a content warning for mentions of murdered sex workers and a murdered transwoman.
> 
> If you read this on a site other than AO3 or Tumblr, it's been stolen! Friendly reminder that if you want offline reading, you can download right from AO3 itself.

“We really gotta stop meeting like this, handsome.”

Jason swings around, automatically raising his gun at the new threat. The realisation of who he’s looking at, what must’ve happened to him (again) hits him like, well, a gunshot to the gut.

“It’s you.” He says stupidly, inanely. He holsters his guns, even though he doesn’t really need to – and what does it say about Jason, that this version of himself has weapons.

“Missed me?” The man chirps even as his expression twists just slightly, a shuttering of the eyes. He’s dressed in a sparkly blue and gold number, as always, and Jason finds himself tracking the shifting of the muscles beneath the skin-tight suit as the Reaper summersaults down from his perch on the windowsill. 

He dances – he’s so graceful in his movements, so purposeful, it’s impossible to call it anything else – over to the nearest thug and probes him with a toe. “Really did a number on these ones,” he observes.

It really says a lot about Jason’s life choices that fucking _Death_ is the least judgmental about the way he carries out justice.

“They were killing my girls.”

Dick sighs. “Yeah, I know. Gave ‘em the best send off that I could.”

Jason’s gotta ask. “They were scared?”

“Not by the time they left.”

Jason nods. He runs a hand through his hair and watches silently as Dick kneels down next to the thug he’s been poking. Dick reaches into the man’s chest and pulls him out of his body.

Souls usually look mostly like their physical bodies. Sometimes they’re smaller, or bigger, or have a different hair colour. Once there was one who was female, and she’d cried so hard that Jason had to push through the pins-and-needles feeling that getting too close to another unguarded soul gives him to give her a hug. “I knew it,” she’d been muttering under her breath, over and over, and all Jason could do was hug her tighter.

He doesn’t often remember what happens in this in-between stage – she’d stuck with him, and he’d made sure she was buried under the name she chose. Dick had told him once that time passes differently like this, and Jason believes him. There are too many people dying, too many people needing to be escorted wherever it is that Dick sends them off to, for Death to be one person, unless there’s some sort of time dilation involved. There could be more Deaths, but Dick’s the only one that Jason has ever met. Or course, maybe he’s just assigned to Gotham, but Dick’s never given Jason a reason not to trust him. If you can’t trust Death, the only thing that’s certain in life, what can you?

And Jason does trust Death, trust Dick. He gets to know him a bit better every time he dies, and he’s.

Jason’s died a lot.

In any case, Thug One’s soul looks exactly like he did in life. He stumbles, when Dick releases him, looks around, and Jason can tell the moment that he realises that the Red Hood is still standing because he pales and fumbles for a gun that he doesn’t have (which, props to him) and then Dick bops him on the forehead. 

The soul disappears.

“Not chatting this time around?” Jason asks. Dick typically does, usually tries to give the souls some sense of closure. Especially the victims, the ones who didn’t have it coming. Jason’s knows that ghosts exist; for all Bats try and avoid that more magical side of life, Jason’s died and there are things out there that like him better for it, will hunt him down if they catch his scent, or aura, or whatever, and sometimes those things are things that are dead.

If Jason never has to deal with Constantine again, he’ll count himself supremely lucky.

Dick finishes up with the handful of others, circling around until he comes to Jason’s side. “Gonna be a tease again?” he asks, the side of his mouth quirking up.

Jason looks over his shoulder at his body. The gut shot is almost healed. “Yeah, looks like.”

“One day you’ll stay.”

Dick’s eyes are very blue.

He’s warm.

(Jason always thought he’d be cold.)

Dick smiles and tugs on the white tuft of hair in the middle of Jason’s hairline. “You’ll be mine eventually, little wing.”

Jason blinks and inhales. It burns. The first breath always does.

“I know,” he murmurs to the empty bodies and makes a mental note to get flowers for Dick Grayson’s gravestone.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been randomly getting prompts on my tumblr (daemoninwhiteround2.tumblr.com/ask if you want to give me one, I do all ratings) from a lovely person who refuses to identify themselves. They’re wonderful little writing exercises, and originally I wasn’t going to post them here, but this one ended up being a reasonable length, so I thought, why not?


End file.
